Montse Navarro flew all the way from Barcelona to end up in downtown Dallas, where she was wowed Friday night by the light and sound show flickering from one end of the Arts District to the other.

What captivated her and an estimated 30,000 others was Aurora, whose visual installations began a vividly collective dance around dusk, with more than 90 artists using the walls of skyscrapers and other unexpected surfaces as canvases and screens.

“They’re very progressive with what they do with their art scene in Barcelona,” said Navarro’s son-in-law, Alvaro Garza, 42, a Dallas native. “But I would say that this is just as progressive as what they do in Barcelona.”

That kind of international cachet is precisely what Mayor Mike Rawlings and the founders of Aurora envision in hoping to make it an annual event.

At 7:20 p.m., Rawlings flipped a switch that lit up a large bulb with wings. But first, he had a few things to say about the city he runs.

“We’ve all agreed that to be the great city we want to be, we’ve got to be a great arts city,” he said.

One of the founders of Aurora is Veletta Lill, the former City Council member and past executive director of the Dallas Arts District. Soon after the New York-based team from 3_Search launched its own stunning show, using the 22,000 square feet of the Wyly Theatre as a screening surface, Lill began to cry.

“It really is an emotional evening for me because I think this is the culmination of Dallas as an arts city,” she said. “We feel this is the kind of event that will be the signature event for Dallas, and so to see it grow in such a short time is amazing. It’s touching.”

Lill contends that Aurora, whose underwriting sponsor is The Dallas Morning News, can become for Dallas what Comic-Con International is to San Diego, South by Southwest is to Austin and the New Orleans Jazz Festival is to that city.

Catherine Cuellar, Lill’s successor in helming the Dallas Arts District, said she hopes Aurora proves “this is not the downtown Dallas of 10, five or even two years ago.”

“The investment that’s been made in public art and at the grassroots level is really Dallas’ art community at its best,” she said.

Aurora was hardly the only thing going on Friday night. The Nasher Sculpture Center was celebrating the beginning of Nasher XChange, a more than $3 million endeavor honoring the center’s 10th anniversary. The Nasher, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Crow Collection of Asian Art stayed open until midnight for Friday’s festival. Cuellar was thrilled that rain stayed away, which she hopes will be the case for the weekend’s other events, the film-heavy Lamar Street Festival and the Index Fest music gathering in Deep Ellum. Those are sponsored by The News’ GuideLive.com.

But Friday night belonged to Aurora, which artist Dwayne Carter said gave him a thrill. He took joy in being able to screen his “Collective Madness” on the walls of the Meyerson Symphony Center.

“It’s just like a fair, except it’s all these artists instead of vendors throwing darts,” he said.

Artist Sara Lovas also participated in Aurora in 2011, when it made its debut with a much lower profile.

“I’m so happy to be a part of this,” said Lovas, the creator of a cast-resin light and sculpture installation. “It’s really terrific.”

As Cuellar said: “It’s a happening, it’s a gathering, it’s a moment, and it’s free.”

Saturday brings two music and arts extravaganzas sponsored by GuideLive, the entertainment website of The Dallas Morning News: